One of the first things I did in the House Gallery was make a layered set of illustrations of views of the universe. The ancient Greek mathematician Ptolemy realised the Earth was a sphere but thought it was at the centre of the universe and that all of the planets orbited around it. He said the Sun was where the Earth is. He couldn’t see clearly beyond Saturn. 1500 odd years later, Copernicus figured out, (with flat earth carried by turtle theories in between) that the Earth wasn’t at the centre of the universe, or even the solar system. Nowadays we realise everything’s much more complicated than we might have thought. This is shown with a diagram of the timeline of the universe after the big bang showing how everything that exists is set in the context of space time. I used different coloured chalk to illustrate these different views of the universe and show how they have changed with time.

Okay, I’ve not blogged for ages but I’ve got tons to blog about. I’m going to put it all in separate smaller blog posts, as I’ve got quite a few things to put up here which are all quite different. First off, then, I just did this mini experiment. I was wondering what would happen if I played with a simple sentence with an open ended meaning. It’s a bit rough round the edges and I’m inclined to get rid of the blur (particularly in this animated gif mode) but the basics are there. I’m still not sure what it means but it sums up a few things I’ve been thinking with this project so far. The whole thing is impossible to grasp, staying just out of reach. I think this crucial.

I haven’t blogged for a while again but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped thinking. Clearly. Had a tutorial with Andy. We agreed that the way to go for the time being was to investigate several of the possible avenues open to me. And there are quite a few.

The more I look at the academic end of this project the more I think I need to have a big element that deals with it in what you might call a more romantic way. I say romantic for want of a better word. The most inspiring things I’ve seen for this have been fairy tales (slightly bizarrely, perhaps) and Anselm Kiefer’s book project, where he has big pages with layered up paint that could be showing everything and nothing. It’s like all meaning has been condensed into this space and turned into mulch. i like that. With this in mind I have been doing similar things of late.